


The Masquerade

by ElectraRhodes



Series: Delighting in Your Radiance 2017 [4]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Abigail is so done with both her dads, Beverly Katz is the Best, Close to Canon, Fluff, Hannibal is so done with Will's indecision, M/M, Murder Family, Scarf Dad, Season 2/Season 3, Some Mild Angst, Will in cant make up his mind shock, except not, hannigram is endgame
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 06:08:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12359133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElectraRhodes/pseuds/ElectraRhodes
Summary: “Abigail? Do you know something? Or at least, do you think you know something?”She smirks, just a little and he finds it both irritating and just mildly intriguing, she is a minx.“Oh right. Ready to listen to me now are we Dr Lecter? And I’m the one with only one ear. What was it Will said to you? ‘Reckoning’?”She grins more broadly and Hannibal thinks of all the many and varied ways in which teenagers are both fascinating and appalling. Minx indeed!“Go on then. What do you think you know?” He pauses, “Please.”“Awesome!” she laughs, “You should read Tattle Crime more carefully. Or at least, you should look at Freddie’s pix more closely. Come and see”Season 2/3 re-mix in which Will does leave, Abigail survives, and they make it to Europe. But Will, being Will just can't quite decide. And there's a certain scarf wearing poet of dubious morality to confuse the issue.Abigail is so done with both her dads, but she's nothing if not tenacious!





	The Masquerade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merey69](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merey69/gifts).



> The fourth of fifteen (omgg) new stories for those wonderful people who backed the Radiance Kickstarter 'Delight' Level. Thank you!! The stories are linked as a series (and in a collection), so if you fancy it you can subscribe to the whole lot and as each one posts they'll just turn up in your in-box! Easy. 
> 
> There's a range of styles (fluff, humour, horror, fantasy, and trope), seasons (1,2,3 and post TWOTL, and SOTL too), canon compliant and AU (can we say coffee shop?), favourites (souls marks, ABO), and lots of wonderful characters (at least two Wendigos).
> 
> Each backer bid for a minimum of 1000 words of fic. Of course the prompts are just too good to only give them 1000 words. Bring the noise! This one has seven chapters plus a prologue and epilogue.
> 
> This one is based off a perfect prompt from Merey69 ... lovely job my friend. Just perfect. I hope I do it justice.

Hannibal sighs. Right from the moment he knelt in an obscure tract house in Bloomington Minnesota he’d known she would be trouble. Interesting perhaps, but also trouble. He looks at her, seated at one of the preparation tables in the kitchen of his Baltimore home,

“Abigail? I’m not angry with you. But I do need to know, did you send your ear to Will’s lawyer?”

Abigail doesn’t look up from her book, or the music playing through a single ear-bud. She asks rather vaguely, and then with more bite,

“My ear? No. I thought it was in evidence? How could I even? Why would you think that?”

She sounds a little pissed about it and Hannibal cocks his head to one side,

“Someone has.”

She looks up then,

“Really? That’s awesome. Not you though? Not some weird triple bluff thing? Is it? I know you.”

Hannibal frowns at her.

“It means someone else is working to free Will. Someone we haven’t factored into the equation.”

“Yeah, well. I expect Will’s made lots of new friends in prison.”

Hannibal frowns again,

“Will is not in prison. I wouldn’t allow that.”

She gives him a sardonic look,

“Yeah. Right. Moot.”

He sighs,

“Abigail? Do you know something? Or at least, do you think you know something?”

She smirks, just a little and he finds it both irritating and just mildly intriguing, she is a minx.

“Oh right. Ready to listen to me now are we Dr Lecter? And I’m the one with only one ear. What was it Will said to you? ‘Reckoning’?”

She grins more broadly and Hannibal thinks of all the many and varied ways in which teenagers are both fascinating and appalling. Minx indeed!

“Go on then. What do you think you know?” He pauses, “Please.”

“Awesome!” she laughs, “You should read Tattle Crime more carefully. Or at least, you should look at Freddie’s pix more closely. Come and see” 

She holds up the tablet that had been sitting on the counter top.

“I took screen shots.”

Hannibal comes to stand beside her and Abigail takes them through fifteen photographs taken from the Tattle Crime website. He flips between them and then looks at her expectantly. She grins again,

“The orderly.”

Hannibal looks at her face, the barely concealed excitement, the potential for mayhem, the actual violence she has experienced underwritten there, somewhere, and the lengths she is willing to go to for a family she can call her own.

He looks at the tablet again. In all of the pictures one particular orderly is either hovering or helping or both. Constantly. There’s even a picture of him closing the door to the BSHCI behind Hannibal when he was exiting the building. Hannibal had been focussed on Freddie Lounds and her picture taking as well as on the meeting he’d just had with Will. He’d barely registered the orderly, just issued an automatic ‘thank you’, as polite as the circumstances required.

But the orderly is in every shot of Will; being taken to or from court; to or from the FBI lab or Quantico, shackled and manacled and even strapped and muzzled and attached to what looks like an old fashioned porter’s trolley.

Hannibal thinks he might have seen him even, in the corridors, on the stairs, en route to the cages, or even in the basement. And the look on the orderly’s face as he manhandles and manoeuvres Will around is all greed and possession and covetousness. It is a look Hannibal knows well. It’s what he sees in the mirror every day after all.

“I do see.” He says and Abigail smiles again.

“I bet you do. He’s going to be trouble you know. Big, big trouble.”

Hannibal draws himself up.

“I think I can take care of myself Abigail.”

Abigail rolls her eyes,

“Yeah? Whatever. But don’t blame me if I say ‘I told you so’ later on.”

.................................................

Abigail looks at Hannibal as he re-does the bandaging on one wrist, he regards her balefully,

“At this point I'd thank you not to say anything.”

She can’t help a little smirk.


End file.
